What and What Not, Portfolio Lead Retrospects (In Enterprise Agile context)

What and What not

A Portfolio Lead Retrospects

Yashasree Barve & Dipen Shah Tata Consultancy Services

Yashasree Barve, CSM, CSP

Scrum Gathering India 2014

Diversity & Women’s Network @ TCS

Dipen Shah


Who’s in the room?


2. Agile Coach or

Consultants

1. Scrum Master,

Team Member, or

Product Owner

3. Program,

Portfolio Lead, or

Manager?

4. None of these

What is a Project?


2. Project is what our

business sponsors tell

us to do.

1. It’s a temporary

group activity

designed to produce a

unique product,

service or result.

3. Something that we

do every day as part of

software development

4. None of these

What is a Portfolio?


2. Something that

Photographers click for

aspiring models

1. A collection of

investments held by an

investment company,

hedge fund, financial

institution or individual.

3. A collection of

programs, projects and/or

operations may not be

interdependent managed

as a group.

4. None of these

Context Setting


Project

• Agile/Scrum for 7 years

• ~30 parallel scrum projects

• ~200 team members in all

• 6 program groups

• Flat reporting structure

• 3 Delivery owners

• Open source + Enterprisy

• Data intensive apps

• Wide technology footprint

Quick Facts

Portfolio

Program


0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

3.5

4.0

4.5

5.0

5.5

6.0

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Team2

Team1

Team3

Team23 Team22

Team21

Team20

Team19

Team18

Team30

Team29 Team28

Team27

Team26

Team25

Team24

Team35 Team34

Team33

Team32

Team31

Duration (months) Unit of measurement

Priority Unit of measurement

Team17

Team16

Team15

Team14

Team13

Team12

Team11 Team10

Team9

Team8

Team7

Team6 Team5

Team4

Program 6

Program 5 Program 3

Program 4 Program 2

Program 1

Our Portfolio!


Stressed out!

Time for a Retrospective!


What is the Career path defined by Scrum?


2. Developer >>

Product Owner

1. Developer >>

Scrum Master

3. Developer >>

Project Manager

4. None of these

People Problems


Cope up with Emergent

Design

Adopt Engineering

practices, be a craftsman

Feeling stagnant,

not growing

Individual Performance

over Team Performance

Cope up with Emergent

Design

No defined Career Path

Managing Career Path


Understand individual

aspirations

Set expectations For

Project and Role

Deep involvement with teams

Separate Role from

Designation

Share & Learn

• Put training plan

• Assign mentees

• Create forums to learn and share

Architectural Thinking

• Explain Big picture

• Design Discussions

• Architecture CoE

• Portfolio level weekly scrum of scrums for tech leads

Fuel Innovation

• Portfolio Visioning

• PoCs with new technology

• Continuous Improvement

• Business value addition


Defining Career Path

What is the appraisal process prescribed by Scrum?


2. Scrum prescribes

Bell Curve

1. Scrum prescribes

evaluating team and

not individuals

3. None of these

4. Scrum does not

define any appraisal

process


Add Scrum-y performance goals

Team Behavior, Building

trust, transparency

Sharing, Learning

Mentoring, Pairing up

Improve the process

through retrospectives

New ideas, Technology /

Business value additions

How do Stakeholders decide the project priorities?


2. Why worry about

the stakeholder

priorities?

1. All stakeholders

know each other

very well and think

alike.

3. None of these

4. Each stakeholders

may have their own

priorities and product

vision.

Stakeholder Management Challenges

Scrum Gathering India 2014 Yashasree Barve & Dipen Shah

Multiple Sponsors

Different roadmaps & Priorities

Varied interaction styles with team

Inconsistency of approach

Product quality not similar

Image source: http://lifewayblog.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/biblestudiesforlife/files/2013/12/road-map.jpg


Roadmap Discussions


Be open and Transparent

Image Source: http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2645/3759196793_77a886c9d1_o.jpg


Elephants and cheetahs in the room

Image source: http://u.jimdo.com/www54/o/s9dc4a98b8dbd1ac4/img/ibc8486b329af5038/1332179649/std/image.jpg


Organizational Rhythm

Project Mapping

0

1

2

3

4

5Complexity

Sponsor Grade

Duration

CostTeam maturity

(reverse)

Business Value

Impact of failure

Sample Project


What Application Support Groups feel about Agile?


2. OMG! 1. Wow!

3. Frustrated 4. I don’t care

The Support Hangover…

Less Documentation

Churn in the team

Not able to cope up!

Frequent Releases

Production Issues


Define what’s “Just Enough”


DEEP Product Backlog

Definition of Done

Architecture Diagram

Security Review Document

Major Design Decisions

Automated Tests

User Manual

Support onboarding

process

Bi-weekly calls to sync up

Add support stories to backlog

Give support Access to Product Backlog

Pair up Dev and Support

teams

Bust troublesome

tickets through Do It Yourself

screens

Supporting the Support!


1 Pay attention to Career Growth in terms of responsibilities

2 Ensure scrum-y goals enter appraisal process

3 Transparent and constant connection with stakeholders

4 Projects’ Rhythm and Mapping helps appropriate oversight

5 Define Just Enough Documentation and help support group

Panch-Mantras for a Happy agile Portfolio Leadership

Happy to take Questions

Hope This Session Helps!

Thank you

?


Date post:	08-Sep-2014
Category:	Technology
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